A friend of mine, a poet from Leningrad who was born during WWII, had been a child who liked running to street corners to visit his friends, the old veterans from the war who sold apples or pencils there as they had war injuries, mostly missing limbs.
One day he recalled, he searched in vain. He ran all over the city. Not a one to be found. Be asked adults only to be told it would be better not to ask.
Later he learned that Stalin had decided that crippled men on street corners did not reflect well on the state. So he had them rounded up, taken out and shot.
Pretty extreme. But this marks one end of a spectrum of choices. The question is whether we help people who need help or do we deny help and instead share resources with those more able to be strong and productive?
Our society faces these choices in the form of homelessness or old age or poverty. We wrestle with choices as we look to invest in human potential or strictly in profit as return on investment.
We may hope to profit from helping people, rather than to help people in hardship just because it should be about community supporting heart-ship.
The Legislature is constantly in the throes of deciding, bill by bill. The current balance seems to be on the side of humanity with a heart. I think however, we ought to ask real estate people and others to consider an ancient equation from the time before there was money or profit. All of us are better off when all of us can survive. This ethic is what made human beings what we are. That is the way to a liveable future on a planet with 8 billion people and more on the way.
Stuart Heady
Camano Island
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